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Antithetical Couplet
In Chinese poetry, a duilian () is a pair of lines of poetry which adhere to certain rules (see below). Outside of poems, they are usually seen on the sides of doors leading to people's homes or as hanging scrolls in an interior. Although often called Chinese couplet or antithetical couplet, they can better be described as a written form of counterpoint. The two lines have a one-to-one correspondence in their metrical length, and each pair of characters must have certain corresponding properties. A duilian is ideally profound yet concise, using one character per word in the style of Classical Chinese. A special, widely-seen type of duilian is the ''chunlian'' (), used as a New Year's decoration that expresses happiness and hopeful thoughts for the coming year. Requirements A duilian must adhere to the following rules: #Both lines must have the same number of Chinese characters. #The lexical category of each character must be the same as its corresponding character. #The tone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tengwang Ge Xu
''Tengwang Ge Xu'' ( zh, t=滕王閣序, p=Téngwáng Gé Xù, ''Preface to the Prince Teng's Pavilion''), full name ''Preface to a Farewell Feast Atop the Prince Teng's Pavilion in Autumn'' ( zh, t=秋日登洪府滕王閣餞別序, p=Qiūrì Dēng Hóng Fǔ Téngwáng Gé Jiànbié Xù) or ''Preface to Poems on the Prince of Teng's Pavilion'' ( zh, t=滕王閣詩序, p=Téngwáng Gé Shī Xù), is a masterpiece of parallel prose by Wang Bo (poet), Wang Bo of the Tang dynasty. Some of the lines in this preface are widely known among the Chinese readers, such as “The glowing clouds at sunset fly away with a lonely egret ;The autumnal waters merge with the broad sky in one fading color.” It is classified as pianwen ( zh, s=駢文, p=Piánwén), which depends greatly on rhythm, somewhat like classical Chinese poetry, but does not have a restriction of how many characters should be in one sentence, and how many sentences in one paragraph. It is named after Pavilion of Prince Teng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; traditionally Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Mao Tse-tung. (26December 18939September 1976) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 and led the country from Proclamation of the People's Republic of China, its establishment until Death and state funeral of Mao Zedong, his death in 1976. Mao served as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1943 until his death, and as the party's ''de facto'' leader from 1935. His theories, which he advocated as a Chinese adaptation of Marxism–Leninism, are known as Maoism. Born to a peasant family in Shaoshan, Hunan, Mao studied in Changsha and was influenced by the 1911 Revolution and ideas of Chinese nationalism and anti-imperialism. He was introduced to Marxism while working as a librarian at Peking University, and later participated in the May Fourth Movement of 1919. In 1921, Mao became a founding member of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cursive Script (East Asia)
Cursive script (; , ''sōshotai''; , ''choseo''; ), often referred to as ''grass script'', is a script style used in Chinese and East Asian calligraphy. It is an umbrella term for the cursive variants of the clerical script and the regular script. The cursive script functions primarily as a kind of shorthand script or calligraphic style and is faster to write than other styles, but it can be difficult to read for those unfamiliar with it because of its abstraction and alteration of character structures. People who can read only standard or printed forms of Chinese or related scripts may have difficulty reading the cursive script. Names The character primarily means "grass", and the character means script in this context, which has led to the literal calque for as "grass script". However, can be extended to mean "hurried" or "rough", from which the name came. Thus, the name of this script is literally "draft script", "quick script" or "rough script". The character ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pavilion Of Prince Teng
The Pavilion of Prince Teng () is a building in the North West of the city of Nanchang, in Jiangxi province, China, on the east bank of the Gan River and is one of the Three Great Towers of southern China. The other two are the Yueyang Tower and the Yellow Crane Pavilion. It has been destroyed and rebuilt many times over its history. The present building was rebuilt in 1989 on the original site. The rebuilding plan was devised by the architect Liang Sicheng, and now the Pavilion of Prince Teng is the landmark of Nanchang. There are nine floors in total. The main architectural structure is in Song dynasty wooden style, showing the magnificence of the Pavilion. History The Pavilion of Prince Teng was first built in 653 AD, by Li Yuanying, the younger brother of Emperor Taizong of Tang and uncle of Emperor Gaozong of Tang. Li Yuanying was enfeoffed as Prince Teng in 639 and spent his early years in Suzhou. In 652 he was assigned the governorship of Nanchang where the pavilion se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avalokiteśvara
In Buddhism, Avalokiteśvara (meaning "the lord who looks down", International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA: ), also known as Lokeśvara ("Lord of the World") and Chenrezig (in Tibetan), is a Bodhisattva#Bhūmis (stages), tenth-level bodhisattva associated with great compassion (''Karuṇā, mahakaruṇā''). He is often associated with infinite light Amitabha Buddha. Avalokiteśvara has numerous Great 108 manifestations and is depicted in various forms and styles. In some texts, he is even considered to be the source and divine creator of all Hindu deities (such as Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma, Saraswati, Bhumi (goddess), Bhudevi, Varuna,..etc). While Avalokiteśvara was depicted as male in India, in East Asian Buddhism, Avalokiteśvara is most often depicted as a female figure known as Guanyin (in Chinese). In Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, he is known as Kannon, Gwaneum, and Quan Âm, respectively. Guanyin is also an important figure in other East Asian religions, particularly Chinese folk rel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clerical Script
The clerical script (), sometimes also chancery script, is a style of Chinese writing that evolved from the late Warring States period to the Qin dynasty. It matured and became dominant in the Han dynasty, and remained in active use through the Six Dynasties period. In its development, it departed significantly from the earlier scripts in terms of graphic structures (a process known as '' libian''), and was characterized by its rectilinearity, a trait shared with the later regular script. Although it was succeeded by the later scripts, including the regular script, the clerical script is preserved as a calligraphic practice. In Chinese calligraphy, the term ''clerical'' often refers to a specific calligraphic style that is typical of a subtype of the clerical script, the Han ''clerical'' () or ''bafen'' () script. This style is characterized by the squat character shapes, and its "wavy" appearance due to the thick, pronounced and slightly downward tails that are up-tilted at t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semi-cursive Script
Semi-cursive script, also known as running script, is a style of Chinese calligraphy that emerged during the Han dynasty (202 BC220 AD). The style is used to write Chinese characters and is abbreviated slightly where a character's strokes are permitted to be visibly connected as the writer writes, but not to the extent of the cursive style. This makes the style easily readable by readers who can read regular script and quickly writable by calligraphers who require ideas to be written down quickly. In order to produce legible work using the semi-cursive style, a series of writing conventions is followed, including the linking of the strokes, simplification and merging strokes, adjustments to stroke order and the distribution of text of the work. One of the most notable calligraphers who used this style was Wang Xizhi (303–361). Wang is known for the '' Lantingji Xu'' ('Preface to the Orchid Pavilion Collection'), a work published in 353 which remains highly influenti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Regular Script
The regular script is the newest of the major Chinese script styles, emerging during the Three Kingdoms period , and stylistically mature by the 7th century. It is the most common style used in modern text. In its traditional form it is the third-most common in publishing after the Ming typefaces, Ming and East Asian Gothic typeface, Gothic types used exclusively in print. History The ''Xuanhe Calligraphy Manual'' () credits with creating the regular script, based on the clerical script of the early Han dynasty (202 BCE220 CE). It became popular during the Eastern Han and Three Kingdoms periods, with Zhong Yao (230 BC), a calligrapher in the state of Cao Wei (220–266), being credited as its first master, known as the father of regular script. His famous works include the , , and . Palaeographer Qiu Xigui describes the script in ''Xuanshi biao'' as: However, very few wrote in this script at the time other than a few literati; most continued writing in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fai Chun
''Fai chun'' () or ''chunlian'' () is a traditional decoration that is frequently used during Chinese New Year. People put ''fai chun'' in doorways to create an optimistic festive atmosphere, since the phrases written on them refer to good luck and prosperity. They are customarily written by hand, but for convenience, printed versions are now mass-produced. They may be either square or rectangular in shape. They are popularly used not only in Greater China, but also in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. History ''Fai chun'' originated from ''taofu'' (桃符; peach wood charms) in ancient times. Peachwood charms are long pieces of wood hung from peach trees. They are about seven to eight inches long and slightly more than one inch wide. According to the legend, there was a peach tree in the East China Sea that was the gate where the ghosts passed through between the underworld and the world of the living. Two gods, Shentu and Yulei, were responsible for guarding this gate. The ghosts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Couplet
In poetry, a couplet ( ) or distich ( ) is a pair of successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (closed) couplet, each of the two lines is end-stopped, implying that there is a grammatical pause at the end of a line of verse. In a run-on (open) couplet, the meaning of the first line continues to the second. Background The word "couplet" comes from the French word meaning "two pieces of iron riveted or hinged together". The term "couplet" was first used to describe successive lines of verse in Sir P. Sidney's ''Arcadia ''in 1590: "In singing some short coplets, whereto the one halfe beginning, the other halfe should answere." While couplets traditionally rhyme, not all do. Poems may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets in iambic pentameter are called '' heroic couplets''. John Dryden in the 17th century and Alexander Pope in the 18th century were both well known for their w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
